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oh, hello! who s the little fellow? it s my uncle george! narrator: everyone who saw the guest spot fell in loveaw with the kid from chicago, including the president of abc and longtime lear ally, fred silverman. silverman: when i first saw gary coleman, you just looked at him and you smiled. he had very, very strong audience appeal. he obviously was a television star, and there was something that was very engaging about this little guy who opens his mouth and sounded like he was 60 years old. narrator: silverman and abc made a deal with lear to create a show for coleman. lear came up with 45 minutes from harlem, a sitcom about an inner-city orphan who s adopted by a white millionaire to be played by hollywood veteran conrad bain. silverman: conrad bain had worked for norman on maude d and seemed to be a natural choice. he was kind of aristocratic in ....
Royalty. but after the show was canceled by abc in 1986, all three stars struggled to get their lives together. like todd bridges and dana plato, gary coleman had trouble shaking the television persona that had made him a star and found the doors of hollywood casting agents closed. brown: gary coleman s situation was i m no longer, you know, this adorable 10-year-old. i m a grown man who s less than 5 feet tall, so it s going toan be very hard for me to get a job. narrator: gary s desire to continue working became more urgent when he turned 18 years old and gained legal access to his diff rent strokes money. sue and willie coleman had set up a trust in 1980 to manage gary s income of a reported $70,000 an episode during the show s peak. however, when gary turned 18, he found only $220,000 in his trust, the equivalent of one month s work. brown: i think most people ....
Thought it would be humorous to take his picture, and he became incensed, enraged. he actually jumped on the photographer s cars, and it caused a huge scene, and this actually made the whole issue more public than him actually just taking the photograph because it seems like he was outraged and out of control, and people really wondered what was going on in his life. narrator: coleman was in fact involved in several fact altercations as a security guard, leading to more lawsuits and arrests. brown: people were just really surprised that he would be so angry and hostile. again, he grew up as, like, this loving, adorable character, and to see him as a grown manr, and really out of control and very angry was disturbing to people, but it also piqued people s curiosity to see what s wrong, why is he so upset? wolf: gary coleman s growth was stunted by his illness, but his mental and psychological growth were stunted, too, by early fame, by perhaps, you know, too much protectionou arou ....
0 drew: diff rent strokes was really the show that everyone in my generation grew up watching. wolf: it was adorable, and it was funny, and it was warm, and it was innovative. silverman: gary coleman, you just looked at him, and you smiled. what you talkin bout, willis? mcilwain: the values that they strived to teach arehat values that are longstanding american values. piazza: but at the same ti time, i think everyone just thinks about them as the poster children for teen stars that get screwed up. wolf: addiction, depression, all the things that can come along with the mix of stardom and growing up. weiss: it s sad because she was just she just kind of became this, like, sexual joke. brown: gary s publical joke. behavior got worse and worse. wolf: it s hard to give up the spotlight, and you always wolf: it s hard to give up the spotlight, and you always think it s gonna come back captioned by elrom, inc. www.elrom.tv narrator: diff rent strokes before the ....
2010. captions paid for by nbc-universal television and good morning, everyone. welcome to today on a friday morning. i m matt lauer. i m meredith vieira. this morning, good news. rescue boats are heading to a remote part of the indian ocean where 16-year-old abby sunderland was found alive and well overnight. this drama began unfolding thursday when sunderland ran into rough seas. her boat was knocked around and the mast eventually broke. last night a search plane located sunderland floating on her damaged ship half-way between australia and africa some 2,000 miles from land in either direction. obviously it is the news her parents and brother had hoped and prayed for. we ll talk to them straight ahead. also ahead, another incredible story of survival. a connecticut man who lived alone trapped for at least three days with his arm pinned under the furnace in his basement. he made a painful decision to try and free himself by attempting to cut off his own arm b ....